“Maleza” (Honest Jon’s) sounds like a first album, but it’s far from it. Las Malas Amistades, four low-key visual artists in Bogotá, Colombia, with a modest attitude toward musicianship and high investment in tone and concept, have been playing together since 1994, and they still make their living-room folk with acoustic guitars, voices, melodica and a bit of cheap electronics. The buzzes and discrepancies between phrases and rhythms are clear; you’re aware of the home-studio room sound, and, in one track, rain falling on the roof. But there’s been refinement over the years, as there always is. The 28 short, quiet, lived-in songs on “Maleza” are mostly about life after a relationship. Those featuring Ximena Laverde are the best, like “Ya No Quiero,” in which she sings with dry assurance, over a repetitive guitar phrase, words that translate as “I already got rid of everything you gave me/I deleted all your messages/Only your memories are left, and they won’t last.” It sounds like a song in someone’s head, carried around all day, arbitrarily snipped to create a beginning and end.“ (Ben Radliff, N Y Times)
2013 1 Feb.